Boredom, Meditation, and Creativity
By Charles Hastings
On May 2 of this year, the 500º anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death was marked. His creative powers were entirely exceptional, particularly his capacity to think originally, breaking free from the common patterns of thought in his time.
On May 16, the architect of the Louvre Pyramid, the palace that houses Leonardo's most iconic work, passed away at 102 years old. I.M. Pei's ideas seemed unimaginable and shocking to Parisians in the 1980s; a Chinese-American architect placing a radical modernist icon in the heart of the royal palace, a symbol of France itself.
Without wishing to compare these two figures in particular, it seems fitting to ask: what processes in the mind promote new ideas, what are the levers of creativity? What is its meaning for society as a whole, and how can we foster our own creativity through meditation and, more broadly, through the way we use our minds and live our lives?
Creativity is not merely artistic creativity. What interests us is the spark of transformative freshness, the openness to new possibilities, and the capacity to recognize potential in all kinds of situations. This openness requires space, and here we pay special attention to those moments when we let our minds breathe, without any specific purpose.
And where does meditation come in? It is possible to be creative without meditating, and creativity is not meditation's primary aim. Yet once the practice of meditation brings us into deep contact with ourselves and our lives, it opens the door to new horizons of fulfillment.
Doing Something and Doing Nothing
Our culture has, for centuries, placed emphasis on work, efficiency, and productivity. The so-called "Protestant work ethic," the rise of scientism and materialism, the ascent of capitalism and other materialist economic systems, all emphasize the external world, progress, improvement, and productivity. In many ways, these philosophies have served humanity well, reducing poverty and disease and opening entirely new horizons for human effort. (Yet they have also been fundamental to plundering our planet's natural resources and creating the current ecological crisis).
We live in a culture of constant stimulation. The spaces between our activities are filled with entertainment of all kinds. The urban landscape is typically dominated by shop signs and billboards. At home, television invites us to fill the space with an essentially passive experience. We may have the impression that we are having an interactive experience on the internet, conducting our own investigations and communications, but often we are simply allowing ourselves to be pulled along by chains of stimuli that distract us, one after another. A recent study at Cambridge University found that some smartphone users were checking their phones around 19,000 times per year.
André Gorz, the late author of the radical "Critique of Economic Reason," states:
“The connection between more and better has been broken. Our needs regarding many products and services have already been more than adequately met, and many of our still-unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true with regard to our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time, and human contact.”
In my late adolescence, I lived for a time in a small house on top of a hill in Himachal Pradesh, India. The caretaker, Chokidar Natthu, an elderly Pahari gentleman in his traditional homemade jacket, white turban, white mustache, and gold earrings, would appear in the evening and sit on the grassy hillside, smoking his water pipe with a soft bubbling sound, gazing out over the vast plains below. Being a beginning meditator, painfully aware of my own mental restlessness, I was struck by his effortless calm, so still, doing nothing, completely self-contained.
Boredom?
Meditation is a moment when we do nothing. We stop our activities and allow ourselves simply to be. We take a moment to step away from the accelerated lifestyle that society imposes on us, to be alone with our own mind. We have become so accustomed to having our space constantly filled that when we allow ourselves to stop, to do nothing, and to refrain from keeping ourselves entertained for a while, it is possible that initially we find the absence of stimulation quite disconcerting and, yes, boring.
Boredom is the sensation we feel when the mind is frustrated by a lack of stimulation, whether because nothing is happening or because some activity is monotonous, or a conversation or event is particularly dull.
This frustration can be felt intensely in meditation, particularly when we meditate for a long period; the mind resists the quietude of resting on the object and tries to escape, seeking entertainment. Generally, meditation teachers consider it important to pass through the experience of intense boredom, as this exposes our love of distraction and opens the way to non-distraction. We feel a sense of relief when we can let go of these impulses.
The historian and futurist Yuval Harari meditates every day and retreats for a meditation retreat each year. He insists that it is absolutely vital for our personal freedom that we offer ourselves a daily period of time without any media, phone, or internet content, basically to allow ourselves to be in our own space.
Simply being has not always had good press. In his Essay on the Vanity of Existence, Schopenhauer suggests that simply being has no real meaning:
“If life, in the desire through which our essence and existence consist, possessed in itself a positive value and real content, there would be no boredom; mere existence would be sufficient for us and would satisfy us. As things are, we have no pleasure in existence except when we are striving for something...”
This question of meaning, of a meaningful way to understand our existence, or of engaging in activities that are meaningful to us, may be the true antidote to boredom and the door to fulfillment. With a perspective that sees the richness and potential of existence, empty spaces become areas of freedom.
Matthieu Ricard frequently refers to the concept of eudaimonia as an ideal state of human flourishing. For Aristotle, eudaimonia was the ultimate aim of human life: to live well, to flourish, and ultimately to have a good life, a concept distinct from hedonia (mere pleasure).
When we meditate, our mindfulness penetrates the experience of boredom, and our very simple experience of our own consciousness becomes highly meaningful.
When someone is able to engage in creative activities that subjectively have intrinsic value for us, there is a continuous sense of fulfillment. André Gorz establishes a comprehensive classification of different types of work and assigns a special place to what he calls Autonomous Activities. He defines them thus:
“Autonomous activities are activities that are carried out freely and not necessarily as ends in themselves. This includes all activities that are experienced as satisfying, enriching, sources of meaning and happiness: artistic, philosophical, scientific, relational, educational, charitable, and mutual aid activities, self-production activities, and so on. All these activities require 'work' in the sense that they demand effort and methodical application, but their meaning lies as much in their performance as in their product: activities like these are the substance of life itself.”
The Default Mode Network
It seems that in these spaces where we pause, when we are not focused on doing something, there is actually a great deal happening. In 2001, Marcus Raichle identified “a part of the brain that became extremely active when the mind was not applied to any specific task.” He called it the Default Mode Network (DMN):
“The Default Mode Network is composed of several areas of the cortex that are most active when no external task demands our attention.”
It is particularly associated with random thoughts and mind-wandering, similar to dreaming, and appears to share some of the activities of dreaming in organizing our experience of the world and ourselves. There are different views on whether this mind-wandering is merely a maintenance massage of the synapses, clearing mental clutter, or whether a state in which spontaneous thoughts can arise freely is a source of creating new ideas and new spontaneous responses to our problems. To quote Raichle again:
“With a phenomenon like mind-wandering, it is difficult to sustain that it serves no purpose, just as with dreaming. Dreaming is the mind wandering disconnected. Why do we dream? Although there is no clear scientific answer, we cannot claim that dreams are merely an inconvenience. Many researchers believe that creativity is associated with daydreaming or spontaneous thoughts about interesting problems.”
A detailed description of the functions of the Default Mode Network can be found in the Wikipedia article. Could the DMN actually be the cradle of creativity? Research continues to investigate how it may be part of an interaction with other factors in creative thinking, but the mysterious connections of the brain have not yet revealed their secrets.
Meditation and Creativity
In an experiment conducted at Cambridge University with students beginning the practice of mindfulness, it was found that the Default Mode Network became less active while they were meditating. Research at the University of Toronto suggested that the practice of mindfulness had the effect of decoupling the “narrative focus” characteristic of the DMN and the “experiential focus,” the bare experience of the present moment.
Although the underlying currents of thought (known as “sub-movement thoughts” in the Tibetan meditative tradition) are generally unperceived for the most part, it is nonetheless possible to be aware of the free flow of spontaneous thoughts without blocking them, bringing experiential focus to awareness of the events of narrative focus.
Alan Wallace proposes the following method of being consciously aware of the underlying tendencies of thoughts:
“In what is mentally perceived, let there be only the mentally perceived without the conceptual overlays of thoughts, labels, categories, judgments. And observe the matrix, the diversity of mental events that arise within this field. Discursive thoughts, mental chatter, mental images, not only of visions, of colors and forms. Mental images of sounds, memories and tastes, smells, tactile sensations...”
“We can compare the space of the mind to a stage, a theater, in which actors come and go. Focus especially on the actors that appear on the stage of the mind, perform their roles, and then disappear back into the space. Attend to these distinct mental events of thoughts and images, memories and fantasies, emotions and desires. Whatever arises, simply observe its nature and leave it without modifying it in any way. To the best of your ability, observe without preference and without overlaying the concepts of 'I' or 'mine.' Simply observe events as they arise moment by moment. Always fresh, always unprecedented.”
Could this freshness, where new spontaneous thoughts have space to erupt, be the cradle of creativity?
Creative People
Leonardo da Vinci was a procrastinator, and a good number of his works remained unfinished, or even unstarted. Generally, he was more interested in experimenting with materials and techniques. We appreciate his masterpieces in painting, such as the Mona Lisa, but what also impresses us are his observations, his sketches, his notes, his ideas, the expression of an extraordinarily original and uninhibited creative mind. Of course, we have no way of knowing why he had that exceptional genius, 500 years ago.
Coming to the present, Matthieu Ricard is an exceptionally creative person, with a particular quality. Having had the chance to observe him over several years, I notice that he seems never to waste time or lose focus, able to have new ideas constantly and put them into action in a very fluid and relaxed state, which seems not to be interrupted by the doubts, anxieties, and procrastination that affect many creative people. Of course, he meditates extensively and can draw inspiration from the extraordinary tireless flow of his mentors, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama.
Matthieu suggests that meditation in which we remain in a state of “open presence” can be a catalyst for spontaneous inspiration to arise. The expression “open presence” has been used somewhat imprecisely by neuroscientists as a description of various types of meditation in which the mind is simply conscious and present, without fixing on an object. It remains in a state of simplicity, relaxation, and openness, which can be continued flexibly as a kind of readiness throughout the day. You can find a practical introduction to this practice in the fifth session of my course Stability and Clarity, titled A Simple Presence. (You may need to click through other course sessions to unlock this one.)
Maria João Pires meditates early in the morning and then brings that initial attention to her daily activities, as a continuous process of being present, “listening” to whatever situation arises. She insists on the importance of listening to the present moment and constantly maintaining a connection between mind and body. In her talk on “Flow” and Presence, Maria goes into detail about the relationship between mind and body, inside and outside.
“Body awareness is very important. It leads us to an understanding of how to connect the body with the mind. Practicing a musical instrument contributes to this continuity of observation, constantly observing how things are inside, outside, inside, outside. Then there is a moment when this connection between inside and outside is flowing and it makes things much easier. The effort becomes easy because you know how to use it.”
She practices mindful walking every day:
“Every other day, I do eight or ten kilometers of brisk walking. I don't distract myself with other things while walking; I observe the landscape and I observe what my body is saying, how it's reacting. You're walking and you see the landscape, the reaction from inside comes out and everything is one, one cycle. I observe how my heart is beating, my legs, my feet, everything. In a way, it's about both the body and the mind. Yes, it's about connecting the mind and the body.”
What can we learn from these people who have realized a creative flow in their lives? Not all of us are creative geniuses or experienced meditators. However, we can create spaces for ourselves by giving ourselves time, time for our own reflection, time to listen to our loved ones and to ourselves. It also allows the mind to relax and trust in its potential.
Have you ever had the experience of leaving a problem until the next morning, “sleeping on it,” and discovering that even if you don't have a ready-made solution, everything seems clearer the next day? Even in a simple exercise, like writing this article, there is a process of “inhaling” and “exhaling.” I gather information and then let it sit for a while and assemble itself in my mind. There is an element of receiving rather than doing, letting the mind do its work in its own way.
Our meditation does not need to be forced and mechanical. It can become relaxed and spacious, so that there is room for transformation. Gradually, we can allow ourselves to trust our mind and the potential of what we receive. Could we call these moments of grace?
As Maria says:
“Are you playing the music or is the music playing you?” “I think it's more the music that is playing you, if you allow it. And then, if you allow it, everything is easy.”
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The teachers Matthieu Ricard, Alan Wallace, and Maria João Pires are all instructors in the Imagine Clarity app. To follow their guided practices (in English only), simply download the app through the following link:
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Originally published at imagineclarity.com